It was Richard Wagner who called Beethoven "a world walking among men."
The world was, of course, his music, and there is no more striking
example of a world so self-contained or so apparently independent of
the man who created it. All of the conscious or subconscious control
that Beethoven was capable of seems to have gone into the
musicleaving none for the day-by-day business of living. The human
Beethoven could not add, could not learn the rules of grammar, and
could not master his emotions. For a...